Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Three guys and one girl walked through a forest on a cold, December night. The forest was mostly green, but there was a patch in the middle that was complete darkness. From the bottom to the top, it was blacker than a thousand midnights in the bottom of the ocean. They sought this place because inside, despite the journey, all of their grandest wishes could come true in this place.

The three boys knew one another from childhood. Raised in the same house, by the same two people they called mom and Frank. The girl was the only child born to mom and Frank and her three brothers, born at different places but reared as one, protected her as if they all had the same blood running through their veins.

The girl became ill one day and found herself on the earth in front of their home, unable to get up on her own and barely able to hear the frantic voices of her youngest brother and oldest brother begging her to wake up. She realized that she wasn’t asleep; she knew she wasn’t dreaming. But what she didn’t know was how to calm their voices.

The remaining brother and Frank joined the adopted siblings in their desires for the girl in front of the house they all lived in, together, to wake up. She heard a strange voice, one unfamiliar, join her family chorus and despite her numbness, felt a hand attached to the voice hold her face and caress her cheek. It was a comfortably warm feeling that drowned the pleas of her family and held her ears at attention.

His message, it was an unmistakably male voice, is only known to her, but when he held her hand she suddenly rose and got up to the delight of those around her. They hugged and kissed her and Frank demanded a celebration that very night. For his one and only daughter was with them.

While her family and friends celebrated, enjoying the revelry of life and their perceived abundance, the girl whispered to her brothers, each one while alone, to meet her at an appointed time in the land next to the house that led to the forest. They pledged secrecy of the meeting to her in their whisperings and watched the clock in the house with discretion until the appointed time had arrived.

The boys looked at each other soundlessly, not wanting to break the pledge to their sister, and awaiting her arrival.

A light shone on the ground and following it to the source, they found an open door from the side of the house and the girl in the doorway. The night’s lamp shone from the moon when the door closed and lit her path to them awaiting her, standing side by side. She went along the line, whispering to each one a private word and leading these three, this band of brothers, into the depths of the forest.

Each worked harder on masking their fear than anything else. The further they went, the bolder she became, the more hesitant the steps behind her. The darkness she sought, more powerful than that draped on the trees, animals, and the place that was the forest was at the top of a hill. At the bottom, she stopped the caravan and looked at all of them.

She asked, simply, if they loved her.

They did.

She asked, simply, if they trusted her.

There was a pause, brief but defined, although their response was the same.

She began walking up the hill with their steps following her. When the darkness changed, their hands could not be seen in front of them. The youngest brother closed his eyes but became more afraid when he realized that he could see more with his eyes closed than when they were open.

The oldest brother, aware suddenly of the safety of his sister, reached out for her, his panic growing with each air-filled grasp. He gritted his teeth to remain silent, gripping tightly to a promise he’d made earlier.

The voice that their sister had heard earlier that day, a deep smoothness that doused their apprehensions the same way it had for the girl while she lay in front of their house, calmly demanded light. They did not know that the forest around them remained in its swarthy glory while the darkness they stood in became as illuminated as a place where the sun was a next-door neighbor.

“Because you have loved and trusted in those that believe in Me, you will walk in the light.” The boys looked at their sister in a new light. She had loved them enough to bring them to the ultimate protection.

AARON WILSON, JR. is a developing fiction writer in California, by way of Atlanta, from California. He is a middle school educator who’s taught in two time zones, and a youth detention center, and believes prayer is needed in school. He and his wife live in Southern California. Read more of his work at trinityspoon.blogspot.com.

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A literary journalist and publicist since 2001, Dee Stewart’s writings have appeared in RT Book Reviews, Spirit Led Woman, Precious Times, Romantic Times Magazines and on The Master’s Artist Blog. Her work focuses on fiction, popular culture, media and their relationship to people who live according to a Christian worldview. She is the also owner of Christian Fiction Blog and DeeGospel PR. Moreover, she writes for Kensington Publishers under the pen name Miranda Parker. Her novel A Good Excuse to Be Bad releases July 2011. She lives in Atlanta, GA.